Wensleydale cheese

Wensleydale is a style of cheese originally produced in Wensleydale, North Yorkshire, England, but now mostly made in large commercial creameries throughout the United Kingdom. The term "Yorkshire Wensleydale" can only be used for cheese that is made in Wensleydale.

Flavour and texture

Wensleydale is a medium cheese that is supple and crumbly. It has a slight honey aroma.

Common flavour combinations

The flavour of Wensleydale is suited to combination with sweeter produce, such as fruit like sweet apples. A popular combination available in many restaurants and delicatessens is cranberry Wensleydale, which contains cranberries in the cheese.

In Yorkshire and North East England it is often eaten with fruit cake or Christmas cake.

History

Wensleydale cheese was first made by French Cistercian monks from the Roquefort region, who had settled in Wensleydale. They built a monastery at Fors, but some years later the monks moved to Jervaulx in Lower Wensleydale. They brought with them a recipe for making cheese from sheep's milk. During the 14th century cows' milk began to be used instead, and the character of the cheese began to change. A little ewes' milk was still mixed in since it gave a more open texture, and allowed the development of the blue mould. At that time, Wensleydale was almost always blue with the white variety almost unknown. Nowadays, the opposite is true, with blue Wensleydale rarely seen. When the monastery was dissolved in 1540, the local farmers continued making the cheese until the Second World War, during which most milk in the country was used for the making of "Government Cheddar". Even after rationing ceased in 1954, cheese making did not return to pre-war levels.

The first creamery to produce Wensleydale commercially was established in 1897 in the town of Hawes. Wensleydale Dairy Products, who bought the Wensleydale Creamery in 1992, sought to protect the name ''Yorkshire Wensleydale'' under an EU regulation; PGI status was awarded in 2013.

References in culture

In his essay "In Defence of English Cooking", George Orwell rates Wensleydale as second only to Stilton among British cheese varieties.

In the popular 1962 novel '' Hornblower and the Hotspur'' (set in 1803) the title character makes "an epoch-making discovery, that Wensleydale cheese and port were a pair of heavenly twins".

Author James Herriot makes frequent reference to Wensleydale cheese in his books including '' All Creatures Great and Small''.

Wensleydale was one of the cheeses named by John Cleese in the Monty Python sketch " The Cheese Shop", which originally appeared in a 1972 episode of '' Monty Python's Flying Circus''. In addition, the shop owner, played by Michael Palin, was named 'Henry Wensleydale', which caused some confusion between the two when the cheese was mentioned.

In the 1990s, sales of Wensleydale cheese from the Wensleydale Creamery had fallen so low that production in Wensleydale itself was at risk of being suspended. Thanks to the popular Wallace and Gromit clay-animated shorts '' A Grand Day Out'', ''The Wrong Trousers'', and ''A Close Shave'', the company survived. The main character of the series, Wallace, a cheese connoisseur, and inventor, mentions Wensleydale as a particularly favourite cheese. Animator and creator Nick Park chose it solely because it had a good name that would be interesting to animate the lip sync to rather than due to its origins in northern England where the shorts were set. He was also unaware of the financial difficulties that the company was experiencing. The company contacted Aardman Animations about a license for a special brand of Wensleydale cheese called, "Wallace and Gromit Wensleydale", which proved to be an enormous success. When the 2005 full-length Wallace and Gromit film, '' The Curse of the Were-Rabbit'', was released, sales of Wensleydale cheeses increased by 23%.

See also

* List of cheeses
* List of British cheeses
* Wallace and Gromit

References

External links

Wensleydale Creamery

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wensleydale Cheese
English cheeses
Yorkshire cuisine
Cow's-milk cheeses
Sheep's-milk cheeses
Blue cheeses
Wensleydale
Mixed-milk cheeses
British products with protected designation of origin
Cheeses with designation of origin protected in the European Union